Mythologist | Author | Speaker | Illustrator
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Articles
If India Was Five Days Old
If the 5,000-year-old history of India can be reduced to five days, this is how events unfurled…
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Rise and Fall of Cities in India
Broadly speaking, India has undergone five urbanisations. …
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View: No Safe Space For Gen Z
As Gen Z enters the workplace, they are hearing on social media handles that Boomers (grandparents) and Gen X (parents) and Gen Y (older siblings), saying they have to work 70 hours a week if they wish to be successful, and shrugging their shoulders when a kid dies due to work pressure, arguing such kids…
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What Sculptures Tell Us About Indian Culture
Sculptures typically show human, animal and plant figures or supernatural beings standing in isolation or emerging from walls. The most ancient sculptures we have come from the Harappan Civilization (2500-1900 BC) — the clay figurines, usually female, bejewelled, perhaps of ritual use; tiny bronze images such as the 10.5-cm long “dancing girl” made in the…
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Articles
Himanta, Muslims & a Liberal Fallacy
Today ‘inclusion’ has become a great ideology. If you oppose it, you are branded ‘fascist’. This totalitarian idea emerges from the usual suspects: the West, European and American academies…
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On Jhatka and Halal
In the 16th and 17th centuries, with the rise of North Indian Vaishnavism, vegetarian food started to be seen as a counter to the Islamic way of eating, which is based on Halal meat, where a hooved animal is slowly bled to death — a way of eating that is mandatory in the Islamic world.…
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Articles
Our Unique Culture
When one steps back and looks at large trends in human history, one can see that to the west and east of India are two very distinct ideas, neither of which inform Indian ways of thinking. In that regard, Indian thought may be considered unique…
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Articles
How Did Invasions Change Indian Culture?
The invader generally takes wealth away from a place. He also takes people as slaves. An invasion can take over the economic and political systems, changing the culture of the land over time…
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Articles
A Supper With Bacchus In India
Both Jesus and Bacchus have an Indian connection. Many argue that Jesus visited India, probably Kashmir, and learnt Buddhism here and the concept of Sangha (Church). Likewise, in Greek mythology, Dionysus, god of wine, known to Romans as Bacchus, came from India, with wild chemicals, drugs, mushrooms, juices, wines, and alchemy that drove people, especially…
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Articles
When Inclusion Becomes Intrusion
The people who created the phrase “free speech” are the very same who have created “hate speech”. It took some time for those promoting “free speech” to realise that not all speech is good, decent and respectful…
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Articles
When Spitting on Someone Is Considered Good Luck
The idea that Muslims spit on food is now spreading virally across Indian social media. It is seen as some kind of Islamic practice to contaminate Hindu food, the claim is made by people with a long history of trying to demonise the Muslim community and therefore needs to be taken with a large dose…
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Articles
Words of Savarkar
We are so spellbound by the Savarkar-Gandhi rivalry, the Veer-Mahatma competition, the violent/non-violent politics, we ignore the role played by Savarkar in creating new words for a new India, for he was part of the Hindi/Urdu debate, and he wanted Hindu India to have Hindu words…
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Articles
Ancient Indian Fashion Today
How old is Indian fashion? It is extremely difficult to prove continuity in the realm of fashion history…
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Articles
Being Cultured In Japan
When we refer to culture, we typically refer to the packaging and the performance – music, costumes, food, dance, literature. We never talk about mindsets…
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Articles
How Pottery Offers Glimpses Of Cultures
Once pots were invented, humans could carry food and water wherever they went. This is why pots became objects of worship…
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No Harappan Kalidas In Sight
We confuse literacy with wisdom. This is because when subjects like history and archaeology and linguistics were being invented in the 19th century, colonial scholars declared civilisation begins with writing…